"The main danger is when they walk along the streets, simply because they are the only ones without a car in Rosarno. Africans cannot report to the police because most of them have no documents and no relatives prepared to vindicate them. Therefore, they are the ideal targets".

The Calabrian writer Antonello Mangano gave a good description of migrant farm workers' conditions in a book provocatively titled "Africans will save Rosarno. And maybe also Italy". He wrote it after the uprising of migrants in December 2008 in protest at the umpteenth robbery and shooting by 'Ndrangheta gangs.Two Ivorians were seriously wounded and their friends from Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Eritrea and Sudan joined forces against Italian criminals, collectively reporting the attack to the authorities. "The African community represented a true anti-mafia movement from the bottom, with courage they lifted their heads, showing a high sense of the state, much higher than our fellow citizens," wrote Mangano.

And what has since happened to these brave Africans? Further exploitation, further attacks from gangs and citizens, until they had to be evacuated from Rosarno yesterday. These facts are a clear warning that more and more migrants in Italy are reaching the end of their tether, due to the hostility caused by a political and media criminalisation campaign against the clandestini. "We must be resolute against clandestine immigration," the interior minister, Roberto Maroni – a Northern League politician – keeps on repeating like a mantra.

Over 300 cases of violence of this kind have been reported in the last two years, mainly against the Roma people, Romanians and Africans. Human rights organisations and trade unions expressed serious concerns until the Italian government was called upon by some European and UN bodies, such as the Council of Europe and the International Labour Organisation, to answer accusations of xenophobia and discrimination against foreign workers, either legal or illegal.

The Vatican had also condemned the rampant climate of racism nourished by irresponsible politicians. The opposition Democratic party has managed only some belated, timid criticism of these events; even the neo-fascist Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, sounded more progressive when he proposed that migrants be allowed to vote in local elections; migrants' children born in Italy get citizenship; and the waiting period for adult citizenship be shortened. But while Fini tries to represent an alternative, democratic right, Maroni is definitely a hardliner.

Under the pretext of security last May he started the policy of "push-backs", intercepting in international waters boats full of Africans hoping to reach Sicily and sending them back to Libya – even though the UN high commissioner for refugees opposed a practice that openly violates the 1951 Geneva convention on the status of refugees. Actually a large majority of those who try to enter Europe through Italy or Malta flee from conflicts and persecutions in central and eastern Africa, and push-backs leave no chance for protection claims. Indifferent to its international obligations and to these human sufferings, the Italian government indiscriminately drives people back to a country with poor respect for any civil rights. Once they get to Tripoli, migrants are harassed and locked up in detention centres for months, years sometimes.

Even worse, Italy is exchanging migrants for business opportunities. In 2008 the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, signed an agreement on colonial compensation with Muammar Gaddafi. The deal foresees a €5bn investment in infrastructure and housing over 25 years, and an increase in Libyan oil for the Italian market. With the help of Gaddafi the government might push the problem of migrants even further away: a new €10m project financed by the European commission will set up patrols along Libya's southern border in the desert, involving Italy, other EU states and the European agency Frontex.

But the Italian government's hypocrisy goes further. Eritrea's president, Isaias Afewerki, is considered by the UN as one of the most brutal dictators in the world, and his regime was accused by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, of aiding Islamic radicals linked to al-Qaida in Somalia. But for the Italian prime minister he is just a good business partner. In what is a former Italian colony, Italian investments range from Italcantieri, a company linked to Berlusconi's family, to tourist projects on the Red Sea and textile firms that benefit from cheap and union-free labour. According to the weekly news magazine l'Espresso, in September a delegation of Afewerki's advisers met the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, and it seems they praised the push-back policy, as it helps to keep out their political dissidents. Wherever these Africans are now, it is doubtful if they can do much to save their own country, let alone ours.